The Morgan Manning House Museum welcomes Michael Lasser for an evening of music and history in their historic building at 151 Main Street, Brockport, on October 10 at 7 p.m. The presentation is free and open to the public with light refreshments and a book signing to follow. Books will be for sale by Lift Bridge Book Shop.
Michael Lasser is well known in Brockport from his multiple visits as a guest artist with Brockport Winter Serenades at St. Luke’s Church on Main Street. Many will also recognize him from his over 40-year career hosting the WXXI radio program Fascinatin’ Rhythm.
Lasser will present his latest book Say it with a Beautiful Song: The Art and Craft of the Great American Songbook. The book takes a look at the qualities that define the Songbook and give its songs life, a century after they were written. These songs persist!
The Great American Songbook is the loosely defined canon of significant 20th-century American jazz standards, popular songs, and show tunes. Often referred to as “American Standards,” the songs published during the Golden Age of this genre include those popular and enduring tunes from the 1920s to the 1950s that were created for Broadway theater, musical theater, and Hollywood musical film.
Michael Lasser is a writer, speaker, and critic. In addition to his newest book, Say It with a Beautiful Song: The Art and Craft of the Great American Songbook (written with Harmon Greenblatt), he is the author of three other books: America’s Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley (co-written with Philip Furia), America’s Songs II: From the 1890s to the Post-War Years, and City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950. From 1980 to 2021, he was the host of the nationally syndicated public radio show, Fascinatin’ Rhythm, winner of a 1994 Peabody Award. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he is the former theater critic for the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and CITY, and for 35 years has spoken and performed at museums, universities, and performing arts centers around the country. In 2010, he was named a Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Rollins College, and was also a visiting scholar at Waterford School in Salt Lake City and Trevor Day School in New York City. He is currently at work on a new book about American music, tentatively entitled I Hear America’s Song: Popular Music and American Identity.
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